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The 2013 Audi RS 5, bearing bold fender flares and caricatured air inlets, could’ve come out of the section of a designer’s sketchbook labeled “experimental.” In photos, it appears deceivingly similar to the A5, a car with which it shares just its roof and doors, but in person the RS 5 looks like it rolled right off the concept stand at the Frankfurt auto show.

Rolled? Make that shot. A hugely fast and capable Audi, the RS 5 has all the go-fast Audi bits you’d expect: all-wheel drive, twin clutch transmission, and torque-vectoring rear differential. But there are surprises, too. Consider the direct-injected, 4.2-liter V-8 that propels the thing. While the displacement sounds familiar, Audi says it’s entirely new for this application, sharing only its size, the angle of the cylinder banks, and number of cylinders with the previous 4.2-liter mill. In spite of its undersquare bore/stroke ratio, the engine makes its 450 horsepower at 8250 rpm — 250 rpm before redline. Peak torque, at 317 lb-ft, arrives at 4000 rpm.

Revving through the powerband is a terrific experience. Valves in the mufflers open under heavy throttle load, blasting the road around you with the sort of highly stressed V-8 snarl the Germans love producing (see: M3, C63). The sound and forward thrust that accompanies it make stabbing the go pedal most rewarding. And given the current trend of downsizing cylinder counts, adding forced induction, and searching for torque instead of high redlines (we’re looking at you, BMW), Audi deserves respect for this engine.

A quick-revving engine like this needs good control, and that’s precisely what the standard twin-clutch provides. A manual gearbox isn’t offered, but it more than likely wouldn’t improve the powertrain, as Audi’s S tronic is so responsive, immediate, and intuitive. The transmission also helps reduce fuel consumption to 16/23 city/highway, which bests that of the M3, C63, and CTS-V. The RS 5 isn’t penalized by the gas-guzzler tax, either, an impressive feat considering it drives four wheels and has a claimed curb weight north of 4000 pounds.

Though similar in weight to the C63 and shorter in length and height, the RS 5 drives like a heavier, larger car. There’s a pervasive sense of heft, through each input and reaction. That’s not to say the RS 5 is unwieldy; in fact, the RS 5 is about as easy to drive fast as they come, offering colossal grip and friendly handling near the limit. But once you approach its limits, you can sense a vast array of electronics reining the car in, seesawing yaw back and forth in a hunt for neutral handling.

The center crown differential defaults to a 40:60 front/rear power split, but is capable of sending up to 85 percent of available torque to the rear axle and 70 percent to the front. The rear axle uses a mechanical limited slip that vectors torque to the wheel with the most traction. On throttle, it rotates the car in a way that feels similar to rear steering. (It also might be the cause of a high-pitched, speed-sensitive frequency most noticeable on deceleration.) The front axle doesn’t have a locking diff, instead relying on the ABS system to simulate the effects of one.

The standard brake setup relies on front 14.4-inch rotors and rear 12.8-inch rotors. They are Audi’s first application of wave style rotors, which have a grooved outer rim. Audi says the brakes save 9 pounds of unsprung weight, which might be more appreciable if it weren’t offset by the optional 20-inch wheels on our test car. Owners who fret over such matters will likely opt for the optional 15-inch carbon ceramic rotors ($6000).

Those 20-inch wheels also can’t help the ride quality, which borders on too firm. The suspension loads up effectively on smooth roads, but sharp bumps and imperfections induce a fair amount of headshake and can upset your chosen line. Unfortunately, the suspension is non-adjustable in U.S. cars. Audi offers Dynamic Ride Control in Europe, a three-stage hydraulic roll control system not unlike what’s underneath the McLaren 12C. Sadly, the rear crash structure that holds the valves for the system didn’t meet U.S. safety standards, and the structure that replaced it didn’t offer enough room for the system.

That might actually be for the best, as there are already too many ways to adjust the RS 5. Audi’s Drive Select system in one of the cars I drove had no less than five settings, and each setting had three options: Comfort, Auto, and Dynamic. Despite this plethora of adjustability, I could never get the electromechanical steering to a configuration that I liked; it always stayed in this sort of feedback void. In Dynamic, steering effort was sometimes too high, and Comfort was too light. Auto mode would change the resistance between the two, sometimes unexpectedly — after an aggressive run up an on-ramp, drivers might be surprised to find that the effort needed to merge into traffic has increased dramatically. RS 5s optioned with the variable steering rack search between ratios of 9:1 and 18:1, while dynamic locks it to 14:1. Cars without the variable rack are stuck at 15.9:1.

Try as these systems might, the RS 5 can’t defeat the artificiality of driving it quickly. But while it won’t set any benchmarks in handling clarity and driver involvement, it is nevertheless quite enjoyable on the road. Audi will send just 1500 examples of the RS 5 to the U.S. in its 2-3-year lifespan, an astonishingly low figure. At least that’s 1500 more high-revving naturally aspirated V-8s on our soil, hopefully guaranteeing it won’t end up on the endangered powertrain species list anytime soon.